Free Republic

Orkney Islanders have Siberian relatives Last Updated: 12:01am BST 23/05/2008 A new study on ancient human migrations suggests that Orcadians and Siberians are closely related, writes Roger Highfield. Orkney Islanders are more closely related to people in Siberia and in Pakistan than those in Africa and the near East, according to a novel method to chart human migrations. The surprising findings come from a new way to infer ancient human movements from the variation of DNA in people today, conducted by a team from the University of Oxford and University College Cork, which has pioneered a technique that analyses the...

The report, in Spanish, basically states that Her Excellency will be traveling to the Island soon, prior to their June 1st primary (63 delegates at stake).

Japan to plant coral island in the Pacific By Julian Ryall in Tokyo Last Updated: 12:01am BST 10/04/2008 Japanese scientists will attempt to "grow" an island in the Pacific Ocean to maintain its fishing territory. Up to 50,000 shards of coral will be transplanted into the waters around Okinotorishima, two stone outcrops 1,000 miles south of Tokyo, in an effort to stop them sinking. The outcrops sit just 4in above water at high tide. If they disappear, Japan's maritime territory will shrink dramatically. addition, rights to oil, minerals and gas beneath the seabed could be lost. However, the £3.6 million...

Modern-day scientific Magellans and Columbus's, exploring the uncharted seas at the fringes of the Periodic Table of the Elements, have landed on one long-sought island - the fabled Island of Stability, home of a new genre of superheavy chemical elements sought for more than three decades. In a presentation at the 235th national meeting of the American Chemical Society, one of the captains of these expeditions into the unknown, described how researchers now are eying other islands on the more-distant fringes of the periodic table. "Now that it has been shown that the 'island of stability' of superheavy elements exists,...

Easter Island statue 'vandalized' SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) -- A Finnish tourist was detained after allegedly stealing a piece of volcanic rock from one of the massive Moai statues on Easter Island. Chilean Investigative Police released this photo showing the damage to the right earlobe. Marko Kulju, 26, faces seven years in prison and a fine of $19,100 if convicted of stealing pieces of the right earlobe from a Moai, one of numerous statues carved out of volcanic rock between 400 and 1,000 years ago to represent deceased ancestors. A native Rapanui woman told authorities she witnessed the theft Sunday at...

DRIGGS, Idaho - Dawn Wells, who played Mary Ann on "Gilligan's Island," is serving six months' unsupervised probation after allegedly being caught with marijuana in her car. She was sentenced Feb. 29 to five days in jail, fined $410.50 and placed on probation after pleading guilty to one count of reckless driving. Under a plea agreement, three misdemeanor counts — driving under the influence, possession of drug paraphernalia and possession of a controlled substance — were dropped. On Oct. 18, Teton County sheriff's Deputy Joseph Gutierrez arrested Wells as she was driving home from a surprise birthday party that was...

Ancient tomb found on Greek island By NICHOLAS PAPHITIS Associated Press WriterA partly demolished, 3,000-year-old tomb recently discovered on the western Greek island of Lefkada is seen in this undated hand out photo released by Greek Culture Ministry on Wednesday, March 5, 2008. Archaeologists said the beehive-shaped tomb, which contained several human skeletons and grave offerings, was the first major Mycenaean-era monument to be found on the island.ATHENS, Greece --Road construction on the western Greek island of Lefkada has uncovered and partially destroyed an important tomb with artifacts dating back more than 3,000 years, officials said on Wednesday. The find...

On a windswept Arctic island 1000 kms from the North Pole, a group of Norwegian engineers and scientists have been constructing a gigantic seed bank inside a frozen mountain. To be managed by the Global Crop Diversity Trust, a group dedicated to the ongoing diversity of plants through a variety of genetic strains, the International Seed Bank will open this week. Known as the Doomsday vault, the seed bank has the capacity to hold 4.5 million batches of seeds from all known varieties of the planet's main food crops -- more than "...twice as many varieties of agricultural crops as...

BROWN POLL FINDINGS INDICATE SUPPORT FOR REPUBLICAN APPROACH TO STATE'S FISCAL PROBLEMS SAYS RIGOP CHAIRMAN WARWICK, RI - The latest Brown University Poll, released 2/11/08, shows there is more support for Governor Carcieri and the Republican approach to addressing the fiscal crisis among the majority of Rhode Islanders despite the claims of the Governor’s critics. The poll found more than half of the respondents would seem to agree with the Governor’s policies on three important themes: reducing the number of state workers and reforming some of their pay and benefit provisions; reducing the amount of time welfare recipients can remain...

Model of Easter Island Collapse Might Reveal Message for Today By Lisa ZygaGraphs based on the researchers’ model, showing the population (top) and resources (bottom). The decline of resources coincides with a sharp population increase, followed by a sharp decrease. Image credit: M. Bologna and J. C. Flores. When a thriving civilization suddenly collapses, it’s often a mystery – and an ominous one, at that. For Easter Island circa 1000-1400 AD, experts believe it was a case of humans overexploiting their natural resources – mostly, the palm tree. But exactly where did the culturally rich Rapanui society go too far?...

ACLU blasts Carcieri record on civil rights09:05 AM EST on Wednesday, December 5, 2007By STEVE PEOPLES Journal staff writerPROVIDENCE — Governor Carcieri has consistently attacked the civil rights of the state’s most vulnerable residents during the first year of his second term, according to a report released yesterday by the Rhode Island Affiliate, American Civil Liberties Union, which likens the term-limited governor’s recent comments to the “nativist” philosophies of the 18th century. The report, according to Steven Brown, ACLU executive director, was prompted by a string of actions the group deemed a broad attack on underprivileged groups such as...

Ancient Headless Skeletons Found in Island Grave By Jeanna Bryner, LiveScience Staff Writerposted: 29 October 2007 11:36 am ET More than fifty headless skeletons have been unearthed in one of the oldest Pacific Islander cemeteries in the world. The individuals were members of a socially complex society, traveling between islands hundreds of miles away, a new study suggests. The finding could solve a long-held debate over whether the Lapita people, thought to be ancestors of the Polynesians, were isolated on individual islands or interacted with other distant Lapita tribes to find marriage partners, exchange information and maintain social ties. Results,...

INFRA-red footage showing a "superbreed" of giant flesh-eating house mice chewing into an albatross chick has been used as a stark warning of what awaits pest-infested Macquarie Island.

Hobbit hominids lived the island life Wed Apr 18, 6:43 AM ET PARIS (AFP) - A tantalising piece of evidence has been added to the puzzle over so-called "hobbit" hominids found in a cave in a remote Indonesian island, whose discovery has ignited one of the fiercest rows in anthropology. Explorers of the human odyssey have been squabbling bitterly since the fossilised skeletons of tiny hominids, dubbed after the diminutive hobbits in J.R.R. Tolkien's tale, were found on the island of Flores in 2003. Measuring just a metre (3.25 feet) tall and with a skull the size of a grapefruit,...

Volcanic Italian island on alert Emergency plans have been put into operation after two new craters opened on the summit of the volcanic Italian island of Stromboli. One of the new lava streams created on the island, just north of Sicily, has already started flowing into the sea. Coastguard patrol boats have been deployed and the population of 750 people has been urged to stay away from the danger areas. The last major eruption in 2002 caused a collapse that led to a small tsunami. The wave reached 10 metres (33ft) high and caused serious damage to Stromboli village on...

Grab bag; a rare picture of Kerguelen from space (usually cloud-covered) and a nice picture of Bryce Canyon. Sorry I missed last week. If you click the Kerguelen picture, you get a 250-meter resolution version. Even though there have been surveys, supposedly there are still places on Kerguelen that have never been visited by a human being in recorded history. Bryce Canyon from Bryce Point

Research team discovers village OSU News Service A team of researchers, led by Oregon State University anthropologist Deanna Kingston, has discovered a prehistoric village on a tiny island in the Bering Sea. The archaeological site, shown by carbon dating to be 800 to 900 years old, indicates that King Island, Alaska, was inhabited by Inupiat walrus hunters for at least a millennium. The effort is part of a four-year study of the plants, birds, place names, dialect and culture of King Island, supported by two grants from the National Science Foundation, one for $540,000 and another for $23,000. Kingston —...

Art From the Island of Hobbits Indonesian statue reshapes Australian gallery Reuters Nov 21, 2006 (National Gallery of Australia)CANBERRA—An Indonesian weaver and her suckling baby are reshaping Australia's national art gallery. The Bronze Weaver, a tiny 1,400 year-old Indonesian statue, has gone on exhibition at the Australian National Gallery in Canberra in an attempt to lure art-wary Australians away from traditional European masterworks and educate them in Asian forms. "With its intriguing sixth-century dating, The Bronze Weaver may be the most striking, rare and important object of Indonesian ancestral art in existence," Robyn Maxwell, the gallery's senior curator of Asian...

Quake Near Pacific Island of Vanuatu Wednesday October 18, 2006 6:46 PM SYDNEY, Australia (AP) - A magnitude 6.2 earthquake rumbled deep below the earth's surface off the Pacific island of Vanuatu on Wednesday, but no damage or injuries were reported. The quake struck 86 miles below the seabed off the coast of Vanuatu at 9:45 p.m., according to the U.S. Geological Survey. It was centered about 195 miles northwest of the capital, Port Vila. No tsunami warning was issued. Vanuatu, formerly the New Hebrides Islands, is made up of 13 main islands located about 1,400 miles east of Australia....

"Because of the prohibition of the First Amendment against the enactment of any law "respecting an establishment of religion," which is made applicable to the States by the Fourteenth Amendment, state officials may not compose an official state prayer and require that it be recited in the public schools of the State at the beginning of each school day - even if the prayer is denominationally neutral and pupils who wish to do so may remain silent or be excused from the room while the prayer is being recited." --Justice Black(?), Engel v. Vitale, 1962 Contrast the 10th A. ignoring...